Who's Kole?

Who's This? A crystal princess.

The facts: A short-lived Titan (less than a year, our time), Kole was introduced (by Marv Wolfman and George Perez) to raise the body count in Crisis on Infinite Earths. She first appears in New Teen Titans #9 (June 1985), joins the Titans, becomes Jericho's love interest, and in March 1986 (going by cover dates), she's killed by shadow demons trying to save the Robin and Huntress of Earth-2 (and failing). This issue of Who's Who spoiled her death two weeks before they came out, but Lilith foresaw a "grim future" for her early as NTT #10. Kid Eternity would resurrect her briefly in Teen Titans vol.3 #68 (April 2009).
How you could have heard of her: Heroes in Crisis makes use of her, so I guess she's alive post-Rebirth and that version appears in the background of Dark Crisis: Young Justice. She has also appeared half a dozen times in the Teen Titan animated series, voiced by Tara Strong, though this pink-haired character seems very different, using her powers to TURN into crystal, not just generate the substance.
Example story: New Teen Titans #10 (July 1985) "Love Story" by Marv Wolfman, José Luis Garcia Lopez, Romeo Tanghal and Carlos Garzon

Kole is just joining the group here after leaving Olympus where she was under Thia's thumb (Changeling calls for very loose entry requirements as crybaby Azrael is also folded into the team, more or less). It's either that or going to back to her parents...

But while her eyes are equally filled with tears, at least she doesn't fly off and her powers could actually be useful. I mean, her first act as a Titan intern is to save Cyborg's ass.

She really doesn't want to go home to the father who experimented on her and gave her these powers, and she appeals to Changeling, whose father also did (AND worked with hers). Gar is game to help her, but Jericho quickly shuts that down (if you know what I mean) and she leaves with him. Romance Subplot Unlocked. Hey, it's followed by pages and pages of other Titans having sexy times, so why can't Jericho find love? For now, whatever his feelings, he really does want to help her and gets his mom to browse the Internet to find Kole's parents' address. But it IS a Baxter book, so the comic goes out of its way to suggest nudity and MORE than suggest "they did it". Starfire and Nightwing, page 12; former Cyborg romance Sarah Simms and a guy called Gary, page 14; Donna and (ick) Terry, page 15; and now Kole and Jericho, page 16:

They end up just snuggling on the floor. Like, slow it down, girl. The next day, the pair head upstate and find Kole's dad who is none too pleased that she "ran away from home" two years before. How does one explain they were kidnapped by the Titans of Myth and rescued by the Titans of Comics? It doesn't go well, so Jericho does a bit of body hopping to get inside the house. And looks like dear old dad is the new Anton Arcane...

And we leave it on that cliffhanger... apologies for picking an issue where Kole doesn't do much in terms of powers, or even wear her costume very much, but the Titans were DC's answer to the X-Men, in this era, so the angst is just as important as the superheroics, if not more so.

It's sad that Kole was designed as a doomed character. She had one of those complicated George Perez costumes, but José Luis Garcia Lopez did a beautiful job with it (well, obviously). Crystal powers are weird, but it's like unmeltable ice, a fine power set. This issue spends a fair amount of time connecting her to the other Titans who all react differently to her... What, did Marv Wolfman just really really want to kill off Amethyst in Crisis and wasn't allowed to?

Who's Next? The guy who unleashed evil on the universe.